Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Paul Spudis at the ISDC

Space Politics has a post on a talk by Paul Spudis at the NSS ISDC. The theme was the Vision for Space Exploration, and especially what is going well and what isn't with the large lunar component of that vision. There are a number of comments on the summary of the talk, and Paul has provided a link to his slides from the presentation. A review of the slides will show that it advocates an implementation of the VSE that follows more of the points in the original VSE and the Aldridge Commission, including a series of lunar robotic precursors (not just 1), serious involvement of commercial space throughout the program (not just in a couple isolated instances), and use of prizes (slide pages 15 and 18).

For more, here's a link to Dr. Spudis's blog. His current post discusses the ISDC and the Space Politics discussions. Here's the Aldridge Commission report, which he participated in - and yes, it recommends a much larger prize program, as well as comprehensive involvement of commercial space in the VSE.